Should you get a stress vaccine? Or would you rather reduce stress the easy (and ancient) way?

Keep calm and carry on

What happens in the vagus does NOT stay in the vagus. The vagus nerve, that is. And that’s good news for anyone who copes with chronic stress.

Deep abdominal breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, which runs from your brain stem down through your abdomen. This is the main nerve of the relaxation response.

Once stimulated, the vagus activates a chemical compound called acetylcholine. That’s a neurotransmitter that sends messages from your brain throughout your body.

And all the messages say, “Relax.”

As treatments go, you can’t do better than that. It’s free. It’s easy. You can do it anywhere. Perfect. I’ve used it myself while driving. It doesn’t exactly erase stress. But when I’m running late and the construction has every highway down to one lane, it helps calm me down.

That’s one way to reduce your stress.

OR…

You could get a stress vaccine that contains modified genes (yikes!) attached to a herpes virus (double yikes!).

This vaccine neutralizes stress hormones. But you should know that those hormones that get “neutralized” are important. They play anti-inflammation and anti-cancer roles in the immune system.

Now what could possibly go wrong with THAT plan?

Stepford world

This stress vaccine is not quite ready for prime time. In fact, it’s still in the animal-testing stage. But it already has a nickname — the “Sapolsky shot.” It takes its name from Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscience professor.

But as Dr. Sapolsky himself admitted to the Daily Mail, “To be honest, I’m still amazed that it works.”

Well…it works in rats. Let’s not jump to the conclusion that it will work SAFELY in humans.

The vaccine tampers with brain chemistry to produce a state Dr. Sapolsky calls “focused calm.” The hope is that stressed-out individuals will be able to cruise through a stress-filled life.

A Stanford colleague of Dr. Sapolsky’s explains that the shot will “short-circuit the neural feedback caused by stress.”

Okay, but what about crises that take years to pass? Long-term issues with health, finances, and family life are the factors that fuel chronic stress.

For those mired in one of these circumstances, would the Sapolsky shot actually produce a focused calm and a Stepford Wife smile?

If so, that’s pretty scary.

Dr. Sapolsky’s colleague boldly predicts: “This could change society.”

But who wants to live in a society of calmed-out zombies injected with herpes?

The opening line of the Daily Mail article suggests that we forget age-old stress remedies like yoga and meditation. And yet, just a few years ago, Dr. Sapolsky participated in a science and meditation conference. Research shows that meditation supports immune function and manages depression. It also reduces levels of cortisol, the “stress hormone.”

I’m not sure how Dr. Sapolsky got from a conference like that to a genetically modified vaccine that uses herpes virus to mess with hormones in the brain. But this we do know: You can’t make a fortune telling stressed out people to breathe deeply and wait for their focused calm.

Oh, and we also know this: If you do tell them that, it actually works.

Sources: 

“Jab that could put a stop to stress without slowing us down” Rachel Quigley, Daily Mail, dailymail.co.uk

“Dalai Lama Gets Meditation Lesson” Dan Orzech, Wired, 11/30/05, wired.com